Piet Mondrian

Hello, I am Piet Mondrian. I was a painter, and I loved art ever since I was a little boy. A long, long time ago, in the year 1872, I was born in a country called Holland. When I was young, I loved to look out my window and paint what I saw. I painted big windmills with arms that spun in the wind. I painted twisty, curly trees that reached for the sky. My first paintings looked just like the world outside, full of green grass and brown branches. It was so much fun to put what I saw onto a canvas with my paint and brushes.

As I got older, I wanted to try something new with my art. I thought, what if I make my paintings super simple? So, that is what I did. Around the year 1920, I started to paint in a brand new way. I used a ruler to make my lines perfectly straight. I made some lines go up-and-down, and other lines go side-to-side. These lines made little boxes and squares in my paintings. Then I filled in some of the squares with my favorite colors. I used bright red like a shiny apple, sunny yellow like a happy sun, and beautiful blue like the big sky. My art looked very different now.

In the year 1940, I moved to a big, busy city called New York. The city was full of tall buildings, bright lights, and happy music that made you want to dance. All that energy and sound made me feel so excited. I painted pictures that looked like the music I heard, with little squares of color that seemed to jump and dance around. I lived to be 71 years old. Today, you can still see my happy, colorful art everywhere. People put my simple lines and colors on posters, T-shirts, and even on big buildings, sharing my love for shapes and colors with the whole world.